


years afterwards

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s08e20 Moebius (2), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-30
Updated: 2010-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-13 11:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During "Moebius": Daniel, doing what he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	years afterwards

Daniel has been a traveller in the desert. He returns in the cool of the evening and draws a scoop of water from a pitcher, tipping it over his head so it drips from his hair and into his mouth. When his eyes are clear enough to see once more, he finds the tent deserted; Katep must be in the chamber below, replenishing the weapons stores and the oil for the flaming torches. It is the work of a moment to pull back the stones and drop lightly down through the gap.

Katep’s face appears like a ghost in the gloom. His voice is tense, startled. “Jaffa!” He waves one hand, and it is the hand that holds the torch so Daniel is momentarily blinded by moving plumes of smoke. “Daniel?”

“It’s me,” Daniel calls softly. He begins to climb downwards and the sound of Katep’s sigh can be heard to stir the dust.

“You, you had gone to Abydos.”

“Yes.” Daniel’s feet come to rest on the stone floor. “I found allies for our cause there, even among the high priests. There are friends throughout the Two Kingdoms, Katep, and we must seek them out. Ra is not a god and his people begin to know it.”

Katep pauses, takes this in, and nods slowly. “And yet,” he says quietly, “I am glad you are returned, my friend.”

“As am I,” Daniel replies solemnly, and takes the torch so Katep may climb out with both hands unencumbered.

Daniel waits before following him up. Katep is already preparing for sleep as he emerges, but Daniel cannot stay in the dimness of the tent tonight. Instead, he steps out into the night and walks across the sand beneath the stars.

“The stars are different.” He can still hear Sam’s voice, delighted and wary, as the ship coasted out into open space. He thinks of her every time he looks out at the night sky.

After some minutes of walking, he sits down alongside a dune, relaxing in the warmth radiated by the desert into the night. His hood holds a little warmth, and he pulls it up over his head. He puts one finger in his mouth, licks the tip, and reaches out for a smooth, untouched patch of sand. With index finger extended and tongue poking out from one side of his mouth, he draws a sequence of numbers in two columns. A pause to do the calculation, and then comes the figure at the bottom which he depicts with more care and reverence. It has always amused him that his ability for languages has never translated to numbers; even now, immersed in a culture he has studied and loved from childhood, he cannot add or subtract using their ways, nor anything other than the simple symbols he learnt in kindergarten.

He sits back, arms above his head and sinking into the dune. A faint gleam of silver water catches his eye from far across the floodplains, and he knows what it means. If the course of the great river has not changed, he is less than a day’s march from the place he was born four thousand years from now. He cannot help but think of his own past.

But the thoughts drift away, as they always do, as they always must, and the real world, sandy and mysterious, presents itself before him once more. The number he has just drawn in the sand is the most real thing in it; it is big, has four digits and starts with a two.

It began years ago, with Sam and Jack and Teal’c gone, dead, their blood sinking into the desert, and he in a half-aware sleep in a tent millennia from home. When Katep said he had a mother, a brother, a sister, who deserved to know their god was false, and Daniel went out at night and drew an Arabic numeral – _5_ – in the sand before him. He took the time to add _(me included)_ and reasoned that the tiny stones start an avalanche.

A man with blue eyes attracts attention, and five people know all the others in a village. A village knows the five around it. They know, and they know, and they know – _our god is false_ , says the wind, and it has always spoken truly.

Daniel has drawn figures in the sand of the desert, in the mud of the delta, and he has traced them in the river’s clear waters. He has been Paul in Athens and the Messiah on the Mount, carrying news, good news, to the people of Egypt. He has walked miles under the sun, cried from pain and crawled from hunger, taken the hospitality of strangers and wherever he has travelled, his words have travelled with him.

He would have liked to have written it all down. _The Book of Daniel_ , he thinks, and smiles.

“Daniel,” says a real voice, and he is startled. “Your journey has not tired you?”

Daniel looks up to see Salatis, brother of Katep, his eyes dark and gleaming in the starlight. “Yes, my friend,” he answers, truthfully. “It has.”

Salatis nods understandingly and sits down beside him. “Tell me,” he says, stretching out his limbs so he is sprawled over the sand.

Daniel tells him. Today, there was a priestess at Abydos. She was a beautiful woman with dark hair and bright eyes, who could have been Sha’re’s many-times-great grandmother in the way she defied her god. _Ra is not the sun god_ , she declared. Her hand was held up to the orb in the sky. _See, the sun is_ there _._

Her laughter echoed off the stones of the temple. When he left she kissed him, lightly and carefully in the shadows, and she stared after him as he set out across the desert.

He cannot sleep when their victory lies so close.

“She will spread the word far and wide,” Daniel says to Salatis. “There will be more and we will have our army.”

“I believe it.”

As the night becomes cold and not cool, Daniel stands up and Salatis stands beside him. If they cannot sleep, they will plan. They walk swiftly back towards the tent they share, and Salatis enters. He lights the lamp, and Katep, asleep in one corner, shifts and murmurs as it flickers across his face. As Salatis pulls out a roll of papyrus, his brother stirs once more at the sound and then goes back to sleep.

Daniel is still standing on the threshold, held between dark and light. He looks out behind him at his line of footprints, and then up at the dune where the timeship was last seen. The hope is still there; that hope that men in green will come running over the hill shooting things and shouting in Americanese, but it flickers a little now. In the morning, when Daniel rises with the people of the rebellion and the world around him changes a little more, it will be as a candle flame in the desert sun, bright but not the reason he awakes.

He steps inside, and remembers this is Egypt. He is home now.


End file.
